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Hearing the Voice of a 51-Year-Old Man in the Essay of a 17-Year-Old Girl

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Hearing the Voice of a 51-Year-Old Man in the Essay of a 17-Year-Old Girl

By Rachel Toor October 19, 2010 11:29 amOctober 19, 2010 11:29 am

When I worked in admissions at Duke, I said a lot of things on the recruiting trail that weren’t exactly genuine: “Your combined SAT scores are in triple digits? Apply!” “We can’t get enough kids from northern New Jersey! Apply!” “You got a bunch of C’s in high school — at least you got a B in weight-lifting! Apply!”

But I did utter one true sentence: I told applicants that I was an astute reader and could tell the difference between the prose of a 17-year-old girl and that of a 51-year-old man. So don’t, I begged them, let your father write your personal statement for you.

I’d spent a dozen years working as an editor in scholarly publishing before I took a job in admissions. I’m not sure that all my colleagues were such careful readers; some were, I knew, occasionally hoodwinked. But since the essay is not that important a part of the application process, it didn’t really matter.

I emphasized writing the essay in my recruitment trips because by the time I was talking to these kids, that was the only thing within their control. Everything else — grades, course choice, SATs, extracurricular activities — were all done deals.

I wanted them to feel some degree of empowerment over this bruising senior year ordeal. I wanted them to understand that the process of learning to express themselves in clear, concise and lively prose could be an exercise in emotional archeology, an intellectual journey.

But then there were the parents.

Look, some of my best friends are parents. I understand that they want only what’s best for their offspring. This is a good impulse; it keeps the species going. But I’m not sure it’s always the right thing for the children.

When I do college counseling (which I do now mostly for the siblings of students I’ve already worked with), I see the dangerous good intentions these teenagers are up against.

One student kept writing the same bad essay. I labored to explain the fundamentals of good first-person writing: that it contains details that are specific and vivid, that it is honest.

He kept sending me slightly revised versions of the same vague platitudes and “Aren’t I great?” anecdotes. Finally I wrote him a harsh e-mail saying that he just wasn’t getting it. The essay was awful.

He started over, with a completely new topic — one he was passionate about — and it soared. Naturally suspicious and cynical, I asked what had happened. Had he been abducted by aliens? Or had someone else written it for him?

No, he said. This time he didn’t let his dad touch it.

Parents who have raised good kids should trust them. Because the essay is not an essential part of the process, and frankly, because most admissions officers know that they don’t know whose fingerprints are all over it, parental interference — except by people who really do know how to write — can be more demoralizing and divisive than useful.

It’s hard to come up with good topics. Parents who haven’t had the benefit of reading thousands of essays don’t know the clichés of the genre and steer children away from anything that might be “risky,” though essays that deal with hard stuff — sex, drugs, religion, family strife — are often the most affecting.

I can understand how difficult it is for parents not to be able to advise their children. But in this case, my advice is to step back and let them express themselves. If you’ve done a good job, so will they.

Ms. Toor is an assistant professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University and the author of “Admissions Confidential: An Insider’s Account of the Elite College Selection Process.”

What are your thoughts on the notion of “parental interference,” and where to draw the lines between applicant, and parent of the applicant? Please use the comment box below to let us know.

In “Tip Sheet,” The Choice periodically posts short items by admissions officers, guidance counselors and others that might help applicants and their families better understand aspects of the admissions process. Click here for an archive of essays in this series.

interesting. i think perhaps at top-tier schools, the essay really does set apart a student: if harvard is rejecting hundreds (thousands?) of valedictorians and kids with perfect SAT scores, it’s extracurricular activities and the personal statement that will separate the acceptances from the rejections.

The pretentious idea behind the college essay (and the entire application process) is that admissions officers will “get to know you as a whole person” instead of the simpler task of assessing whether you can do the academic work. Firing most of the admissions officers and admitting the class primarily based on grades and test scores would probably produce a stronger class academically, but it would be harder to fill the implicit racial quotas that way.

Who cares if lots of students are from northern New Jersey? Too many students from New York City used to be code for “too many Jews” (and it may still be).

Wait… the point of this little blurb is supposed to be “don’t let you father write your essay for you, because admin officers such as myself will be able to tell.” But the anecdote in the middle of the piece involves a student who wrote a good essay, on his own, and the response from this former admin officer was, “hey, did your dad write this?”.

The message I’m getting is that kids are screwed no matter what. They can write a bad essay, write a good one and have admissions think their dad wrote it, or actually have their dad write it. None of these are particularly inspiring choices.

Master Shakespeare was a 51 year old man writing the lines very convincingly for a teen age Juliet. Great writers are born, not made and there are only a few in a generation. Hey if your father is a great writer along the lines of James Joyce or James Michener, they are always intrigued by writing in specific restricted formats like a college entry essay. It is mental calisthetics for a world class intellect. Putting your frame of reference in a new character of different age and circumstance is what all fiction writers do.

A college essay is a pedestrian thing that will be read by less than a dozen people and discarded in a shredder. But great writing from a really great writer will live on in posterity. Imagine reading a college essay written surreptiously by W. Shakespeare…….

I just looked over a college essay for my cousin. I could tell just by reading it that it had been thoroughly masticated by her parents prior to my ever having seen it. I think I’ll send her this column in response.

OK, so shoot me, but I would as a parent retouch (not write, but edit and suggest expansions) my son’s essay.

Why? Why would I sully the process of college admissions gauging my son’s abilities and true soul, by inserting myself into it, you ask?

Well, because he was asked, as a *technology* student (think, veterinary technician or transportation mechanics) to write an essay for admissions. That’s right, SUNY IT wanted an essay.

Writing is not his strong point, not his way to express who he is. Moreover, students like him are not entering fields where written communication is a primary skill. These schools are not particularly selective. So, I seriously question why this essay is needed. It’s just another hoop to jump through. If the college plays that game, we can play that game. I have no problem with smoothing over things like that for my son. People do that for each other all the time.

These are all good points. In this case of the student I mentioned, he was clearly a better writer than his dad–since all the prior versions had been dad-ified. It was the dramatic change in tone that surprised me.

Because there are so many services–indeed, an entire pre-college industry–that “help” students with the essay, it’s hard to believe that any seasoned admissions officer can take them at face value. What I care about is that students become better writers. Since I don’t think the essay has much impact on the admissions decision, I believe that encouraging kids to write as well as they can is the important part. And letting them to the work themselves, as they will have to when they get to college.

Boy have you missed the boat here. The reason why so many parents write their kids essays is that they cannot get their kids to write the darned things.

My oldest, who is presently an editor of a financial publication, and who spent his years at college working up to editor-in-chief of his school paper, absolutely wouldn’t write his college essays. The only reason they were ever written is that the guy who was coaching him on choosing a school came in one day, saw that nothing had been done, packed his bags and said to my son, “I’m not going to take money from your parents for doing nothing.” The very next week all the essays were written.

Excessive delay in writing the essays is the reason why parents do their kids essays, not a desire to be creative. They just want to get to sleep at night knowing that their kid has finished his applications.

For being so sleep deprived, I distinctly remember the college admissions process. Frankly, the essay was more fun then my homework most of the time. Now, I can’t say if my approach would work every time, but I applied to seven schools and was out right accepted to five, wait listed for one, and rejected by the other. (Not bragging, just trying to give you an overview)
For the love of Pete, write something original. These admissions officers read essays for MONTHS. I distinctly remember one seminar on the admissions process ( I went to a boarding school, it was required) where they kept saying “Write about who you are and what makes you different”. I thought, “Well hell might as well give ’em what they want” So frustrated with the admissions process I went home and wrote a poem about who I was.

Which I then used as one of my essays.

My college councilor (again, boarding school)said it was one of the best things she’d read in years
I also wrote a script tweaking of American Idol that I didn’t use.

My point:
Seriously, have fun with it. And whatever you do, don’t let your parent’s do anything but copy edit it. I don’t care if your Dad IS William Shakespeare they will take out your voice and put their own in. Parent’s of kids applying to college are like mother’s of the bride…they just kind of go temporarily insane until the acceptance letters come in.
Keep it clean, write about your passion and have fun with it.
There’s also a book about 100 great Harvard essays that I found hilarious and extremely helpful.

Is there a difference between actually writing the essay for your child and editing/proofreading it? My son is applying for college now. I went through his common application. There were some typos and grammatical errors – I corrected those and made suggestions for improvement in some places – some of which he incorporated and some he ignored.

Beyond that, we parents keep getting mixed messages about what is important and what is not in an application: test scores matter and do not matter; GPA matters and does not matter; extracurricular activities are important and not important and now essays are carefully read and discarded after a cursory glance.

In the end, after reading several columns in this blog, I get the feeling that either the process is arbitrary to the point of being ridiculous or there is some secret formula that no admissions officer is willing to reveal to the general public.

There is one major issue about going on just scores – especially GPA. I had great test scores but only a better than average GPA in high school. I was fortunate enough to go to a college prep high school and worked along people who were clearly very bright. I always felt middle-of-the-road in intelligence because there were people who made me feel dumb. My own grades were good but not great partly because of the fact that I wasn’t at the top amongst the very top and because the school demanded more from us. When I ended up at a good but not great state school, I found that I was at the top of the top there without much effort – definitely less than what I had to put in during high school. I acknowledge part of it was the education I received in high school, but another part was that while I was in the middle at my high school, I was actually among the brighter individuals overall. In college when discussing amongst friends our backgrounds, I learned that many took AP classes with the subsequent boost in GPA that affords without sometimes taking the tests or doing very poorly on them. I learned that I took some of those same AP classes and even took the test for a class that wasn’t AP. I generally had lower grades in the class, but higher AP test scores, even for the test I took without taking the actual AP class (US History). So our GPAs clearly didn’t make sense when comparing across schools. As for the other standardized tests (SAT/ACT) despite their flaws, a test is a test and generally will mean the same across the country (there’s always the questions, especially the old analogies that I think are gone that were biased to the Northeast & colder regions – what’s a (snow) drift we Southern Californian’s would ask), but it’s far more accurate than just a GPA…

I think the essay is very important and so are cover letters. I was never a very diligent student. I had high grades in subjects that interested me and low grades in subjects that bored me. My grades in high school, college, and law school ranged from A to C-. My test scores were pretty high but I never prepared for the tests. I guess I am somewhat of a slacker. Writing has always been one of my stronger skills. By demonstrating that I could write clearly, insightfully, and with the occasional dose of wit, I managed to get into some top colleges (Barnard, University of Chicago,etc.), top 2nd tier law schools, and land some very competitive jobs. I realize these feats are not impressive to those who were diligent students and took their studies more seriously. However, I am willing to bet I had more fun , and I am pleased with where I am today. I have never stressed out much about school or work. I am surrounded by stress cases and have been my whole life. Being able to write well has gotten me to the places I want to be without having to become a test score/ grade obsessed, achievement oriented basket case. Being able to communicate is so important,

I would’ve thought this would most succinctly be phrased “don’t cheat.” But “don’t cheat – you’re much worse at it than you think” is probably a more convincing line.

My parents were immigrants, so they deferred to me for the essay on more practical grounds for themselves, as well: They weren’t familiar with the college application process in this country.

I think this applies generally to most parents – it seems like standards for college admissions change pretty often. If that’s the case, chances are kids know what they’re doing better than their parents do, by default.

The most egregious example of this I have personally experienced as a tutor was from a parent of a fifth grader applying to a private boarding school. Mom sent me an e-mail (one of many) with an essay draft that read like a 50-year-old woman trying to sound like a smart 10-year-old boy. She ended the e-mail with, “I haven’t shown this to [my son] yet. I thought I should run it by you first.” Usually parents at least put the essay in their kid’s hands on its way to me.

It was difficult to convince Mom that the admissions process was about finding a school that was a good fit for her son, as opposed to easing her own anxiety.

Luckily, her son was precocious enough to insist that he be allowed to write his own essay.

It’s reassuring to know that this is one area where parents are likely to be their children’s own worst enemy, at least most of the time. When I read my daughter’s essays, I did point out little grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes, but suggesting any real change was absolutely off limits, her orders. I pointed out a few things that made me cringe and was told that those were the things that made the essay interesting. This is but one small example of my ongoing discovery of how different her generation is from mine.

As a student now at an ivy league institution, I can not agree more. I was lucky to grow up in a house where I was encouraged to do my own thing and go to school where ever I could find a way to pay for it. My senior year I applied and won a state-wide scholarship from my state’s house of representatives that went along with that year’s essay contest. While never a grammar whiz in high school I thought it was a decent essay. A few months after I won the prize and had started my first semester my mom called one day to tell me that she had received a phone call at 7 AM that Saturday morning from a parent whose son did not win the scholarship that I had. She called outraged that I had won the scholarship because she had found 3 grammatical errors in my text. I can only imagine she spent more time worrying about her son’s essay than he did.

Parents, do yourselves a favor, let your kid do their own thing academically. Of the happiest of my peers, I would say most have found their niche with very little guidance from their parents. Give them opportunities but let them do as they wish.

As a college instructor, I’d have to say being able to write an essay is extremely important. To be able to structure your thoughts around a central point is what I ask my students to do for every essay I assign to them. Whether it’s research or an opinion paper it still requires that skill.